The present invention relates to an improved pickup mechanism for electric pianos, and more particularly relates to improvement in mounting of a pickup unit such as a piezoelectric element to the bridge for purposes of generating sounds whose damping characteristics is very close to that of natural sounds generated by non-electric pianos.
In the construction of electric pianos, vibrations of strings are picked up by a pickup mechanism whose corresponding electric output signals are passed to speaker device after suitable electric amplification. In the case of the conventional pickup mechanism, the pickup unit such as a piezo-electric element is directly coupled to the bridge in order to pick up the string vibrations. This direct coupling of the pick unit does not allow sufficient mixing of vibrations from different strings and, accordingly, it is difficult to compose tones close to the natural tones generated by the non-electric pianos. In addition, since the pressure caused by string tension is imposed via the bridge upon the pickup unit in the form of static load, permanent strain may develop in the construction of the pickup unit which seriously degrades sensitivity of the pickup unit.
The above-described static load on the pickup unit causes lowering in frequency characteristics thereof while resulting in degraded tone volume and tone quality during long use of the pickup mechanism.